1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to computers and software, and more particularly, to linking browser bars and active documents within a browser.
2. Description of Related Art
As known in the art, the Internet is a world-wide collection of networks and gateways that use the TCP/IP suite of protocols to communicate with one another. At the heart of the Internet is a backbone of high speed data communication lines between major nodes or host computers consisting of thousands of commercial government educational and other computer systems that route data and messages.
The World Wide Web (WWW) refers to the total set of interlinked hypertext documents residing on hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) servers all around the world. Documents on the WWW, called pages or web pages, are written in hypertext mark-up language (HTML) identified by uniform resource locators (URL) that specify the particular machine and pathname by which a file can be accessed and transmitted from node to node to the end user under HTTP. A web site is a related group of these documents and associated files, scripts, subprocedures, and databases that are served up by an HTTP server on the WWW.
Users need a browser program and an Internet connection to access a web site. Browser programs, also called "web browsers," are client applications that enable a user to navigate the Internet and view HTML documents on the WWW, another network, or the user's computer. Web Browsers also allow users to follow codes called "tags" imbedded in an HTML document, which associate particular words and images in the document with URLs so that a user can access another file that may be half way around the world, at the press of a key or the click of a mouse.
Browser bars are an Internet Explorer technology called Explorer Bars. Currently, the browser bar is visible on the left side of the Internet Explorer window. The standard browser bars that ship with Internet Explorer are search, channels, history, and favorites. Currently, for Internet Explorer Microsoft provides an application program interface (API) to allow third parties to write their own browser bar programs. An API is a set of routines used by an application program to direct a performance of the procedures by the computer's operating system.
Active documents are technology that allow a document, for example, a Word document, to be contained by any application that supports active documents. Internet Explorer is one of the few applications that behaves as an active document container. This allows any active document to be contained by Internet Explorer. You load a Word document into Internet Explorer and display it inside its window because Word documents are active documents.
ActiveX is a set of technology that enables software components to interact with one another in a networked environment regardless of the language in which the components are created. Currently, ActiveX is used primarily to develop interactive content for the World Wide Web, although it can be used in other desktop applications. ActiveX controls are reusable software components that incorporate ActiveX technology. These components can be used to add specialized functionality, such as animation or pop-up menus, to web pages, desktop applications, and software development tools. ActiveX control components can be used in place of active documents.
Heretofore, however, active documents or ActiveX, and browser bar technologies have not been linked together to allow an active document to actually act as a container that encapsulates other Windows programs. This would allow Internet Explorer to contain active documents and active documents to contain other Windows programs. This linking of browser bar and active Windows technologies will allow for an interaction that will look and feel like an integrated application.